Chapter 9—Australia’s Ever-changing Forests VI: Proceedings of the Eighth National
Conference on Australian Forest History. Brett J. Stubbs et al. (ed.).
© 2012, ISBN 978-0-9757906-2-5
From Kauri to Kumara:
Forests and people of the
Pacific Islands
Sue Feary
Independent scholar, Vincentia, NSW 2540
Introduction
A common perception of Oceania is one of a scattering of isolated
and widely separated islands, immersed in a vast expanse of ocean.
Another perspective, held by the indigenous people themselves, is
one of islands connected to each other by storylines and cosmologies
to form a single cohesive unit, built on a history of ocean voyaging
and knowledge transference to new environments. Waves of voyaging
over thousands of years have disseminated traditional knowledge of
the spiritual and economic values of natural forests and constructed
gardens, from Hawaii in the north, to New Zealand in the south and
eastwards to Easter Island. The history of exploration, discovery and
settlement of the islands of the Pacific Ocean demonstrates human
ingenuity and endeavour and a deep knowledge of plants and trees,
enabling human settlement of depauperate islands with little to offer
in the way of palatable fauna and flora.
Forests and trees feature strongly in Oceanic cultures. The
cosmologies of Oceanic people reflect the values of trees as symbolising
both rootedness in place and mobility across vast expanses of oceans.
Roots of forest giants, such as the New Zealand kauri, represent a
symbolic connection with place, while their trunks provided the
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timber for the canoes that carried people on their epic ocean voyages
across the Pacific.
Throughout the human history of the Pacific region, native forests
and trees have been integral to the economic and spiritual life of its
indigenous people. As with indigenous cultures throughout the world,
the traditional life of Oceanic cultures was underpinned by beliefs
and cosmologies that placed humans as part of nature, rather than a
controlling influence over it.
The literature on the biological, ethno-botanical and environmental
histories of the Pacific, however, tells a story of substantial and
sometimes catastrophic environmental change as a result of human
activities—hunting, agricultural practices, plant breeding, and
introduction of new cultivars to island ecosystems. Human survival
and progress were seemingly premised on ‘disturbing the natural
order’, suggesting that cultural traditions and cosmologies connecting
people and nature encompassed not only natural forests but also
cultivated landscapes.
This paper explores the transference of traditional forest knowledge
across space and time in the islands of the Pacific Ocean, and
demonstrates its vulnerability in the light of pressure for economic
development.
Imagining Oceania
The environmental setting for this paper is the planet’s largest ocean,
the Pacific Ocean (from the Latin name Mare Pacificum, ‘peaceful sea’,
named by the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan). The Pacific
Ocean comprises about 46 per cent of the Earth’s water surface, with
the continental land masses of Australia/New Guinea and central/
south America bordering its western and eastern edges respectively.
Within this vast expanse of ocean are situated thousands of small
islands, comprising mainly independent countries, although some
remain territories of other countries (Figure 1).
Oceanic islands and their cultures can be described and understood
through political, cultural, biological, historical, geological or
economic lenses. Representations of the latter often dwell on ‘lack’—
depicting Oceania as a place lacking economic development, lacking
connections, lacking land, and lacking resources. Indigenous people of
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3
Figure 1: The countries of Oceania (from Grattan 1963, p. 191).
the Pacific have challenged this language of colonial and developmental
orthodoxies and stressed, instead, the notion of a ‘sea of islands’
rather than islands in a sea (Jolly 2007). The connectivity embraced
by this notion emerges from traditional connections embedded in the
creation stories of Oceania, which emphasise movement—of people,
of their knowledge and of their cultivated biota. Imagining Oceania
in this more holistic way has been the basis for recent research into
the relationships between forests and people in an area defined as
the Western Pacific, for a chapter in a book being prepared by the
International Union of Forest Research Organisations (IUFRO) on the
state of the world’s indigenous forest knowledge (Feary et al. 2012).
This current paper has been informed by the IUFRO research, with
a focus on the islands commonly referred to collectively as Polynesia,
Micronesia and Melanesia. Australia is excluded because it differs
from the rest of the Pacific in almost every way, notwithstanding
similar antiquities for the commencement of human occupation in
Papua New Guinea (White and O’Connell 1982) and a colonial history
comparable in part with that of New Zealand (Nettheim et al. 2002).
In preparing the chapter and talking with other authors preparing
chapters for the IUFRO book, it became apparent that ‘indigenous
knowledge’1 meant different things to different people, depending
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primarily on the social history of their country of origin. In fact, some
definitions of indigenous people, including, surprisingly, that of the
United Nations, would exclude Oceanic peoples (and their knowledge),
as they are not minority populations in their own countries (Thaman,
K. 2003). The definition of ‘indigenous knowledge’ developed by the
United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF) is:
a cumulative body of knowledge, practice and belief, handed down
through generations by cultural transmission and evolving by adaptive
processes, about the relationship between living beings (including
humans) with each other and with their forest environment (UNFF
2004).
When indigenous knowledge is used in a populist or political context,
or outside the disciplines of anthropology and other social sciences, it
is often portrayed with its temporal and spatial dimensions in absentia.
But traditional knowledge does not exist in isolation; it is something
built up over millennia and passed on by countless generations of
indigenous people through story telling and customary law, as a way of
knowing about and connecting with local environmental and cultural
settings. It is not possible to fully understand ‘traditional knowledge’
without understanding how it has evolved and continues to evolve.
This is of particular relevance among Pacific peoples, whose cultural
traditions are characterised by extreme mobility and adaptation of
traditional knowledge to newly settled islands with unfamiliar biota.
Settling Oceania
The cultures of Oceania have both shaped and been shaped by their land
and seascapes over millennia. A distinctive difference exists between
the larger land masses on the region’s western and southern borders—
New Zealand and New Guinea (and Australia)—and the increasingly
smaller and more isolated oceanic islands moving eastwards to island
Polynesia and northwards to Micronesia.
Strictly speaking, the lands of Oceania have both continental and
island origins, which have had considerable implications for their
discovery and settlement by humans. The largest landmass considered
in this paper is New Guinea, once joined to Australia, which together
with Tasmania formed the Pleistocene continent of Sahul (White and
O’Connell 1982).
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5
Eastward from New Guinea, curving to the south, tectonic activity
formed the rest of Melanesia in a broad arc of islands composed of
continental rocks of volcanic, sedimentary and metamorphic origin
(Howells 1973). This area lies within a zone of seismic instability, and
volcanic eruptions are common (Bellwood 1979). Volcanic eruptions
can destroy forests and gardens, but they also produce the rich
volcanic soils that benefit subsistence agriculture. Further eastward,
the Polynesian islands (except New Zealand) are small and widely
separated; the result of volcanic activity and subsequent erosion,
producing three island types—the high islands, the low islands or
atolls, and raised coral islands. Northward, the islands of Micronesia
are composed almost entirely of coral atolls (Bellwood 1979).
Continental and island origins have produced vastly different soil
types, which have in turn been a major determinant of the nature
and extent of original forest cover and of subsequent agro-forestry
and agricultural development by their human inhabitants. The rich
volcanic soils of the high islands and continents contrast with the
coral-based infertile soils and lack of potable water on atolls (Wilke et
al. 2002). The isolation and limited size of Oceanic islands have had a
dominant impact, not only on humans, but also on the entire island
biota (Kirch 1979).
Broadly speaking, archaeological, linguistic and anthropological
research points to a history of human occupation of the wider Pacific
that commenced around 40,000 years ago in the Pleistocene landmass
of a joined Australia and New Guinea (White and O’Connell 1982)
and moved east and south into the islands of the Pacific Ocean (Figure
2). There is also evidence for human settlement in island Melanesia
(New Ireland and Solomon Islands) soon after (Mountain 1993).
The history of settlement of the Oceanic islands involved extensive
sea voyaging and the transportation of domesticated food plants and
animals, which began around 3,000 years ago, and culminated in the
settlement of New Zealand around 800–1,000 years ago (Bellwood
1979).
The first inhabitants were hunter-gatherers, utilising the resources
of the forests and all other ecosystems. Pollen and archaeological
evidence suggest that techniques of plant management and
manipulation through forest burning and small-scale clearing were
being practiced and developed in the New Guinea highlands long
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Figure 2: Main direction of human settlement in Oceania
(from Gathercole 1977, p. 190).
before full agriculture commenced around 10,000 years ago (Mountain
1993). Indigenous societies practicing early forms of agriculture would
still have needed to rely heavily on wild resources to supplement the
products of untested food production techniques. While some of the
food resources, for example wild yams and bananas, may have been
known to the colonisers, others would have required trial and error in
the domestication process (Powell 1976).
The islands of Oceania are eastward of a major biogeographical
boundary, Wallace’s Line, and many naturally occurring edible plant
foods do not occur there. Wallace’s Line is the boundary between
two major biogeographical provinces, and runs roughly south-north
between the islands of Borneo and Sulawesi, curving east below the
Philippines. The paucity of native food plants and edible animals on the
coral atolls and low islands of Oceania has had important consequences
for humans, who needed to bring in their own domesticated crop
plants (and associated traditional knowledge) in order to colonise new
islands (Kirch 1979). These came with later arrivals, the Austronesians2,
whose knowledge of crop production techniques was incorporated
into, or in some cases replaced, established indigenous systems of land
management, creating a cultural mix of horticultural and hunter-
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7
gatherer practices. The production of food crops and manipulation of
forests to increase yields of fruits or seeds brought a new dimension to
the corpus of traditional knowledge which was primarily associated
with the natural environment and its resources. Oceanic cultures
are characterised by the subsistence practices of swidden or shifting
agriculture, mainly the production of root crops; and agro-forestry,
the manipulation of native trees to increase yield and to expand their
geographic distribution.
The islands of Polynesia were the last places on earth to be settled
by humans, so traditional knowledge for this area is relatively recent.
Pottery and linguistic and other evidence points to a culture that grew
out of the earliest settlements in island Melanesia around 3,000 years
ago. Settlement occurred first in western Polynesia and spread to the
tiny remote islands of eastern Polynesia (Gathercole 1977). It has been
postulated that colonisation did not occur from island to island but
involved groups of islands populated by successive waves of human
sea voyagers moving between islands over millennia (Green 1993).
Thus, Polynesian culture developed ‘within itself’, in response to the
different environmental situations encountered. Ethno-historical
sources note both similarities and differences between different
Polynesian societies, due partly to the way certain resources were used.
For example on high islands, the pandanus tree was used mainly for
its leaves, for making a range of items such as house thatch, sails and
mats. On coral islands it provided food from its buds, fruit and seeds
(Gathercole 1977).
Campbell’s rendition of the discovery of the island of Tonga
epitomises the early history of Polynesia:
An adventurous, sea-faring people capable of undertaking long sea
voyages and of transporting colonising groups that had all the necessities
for survival in an exotic and impoverished environment. In other words,
colonists of both sexes made up the parties; there were probably older
people and children, as well as men and women in their prime; they
took with them seeds and roots of important plants that would supply
not only food but also building materials, clothing, dyes, cosmetics
and medicines. Seedlings of tree species that would enable the future
construction of more sea going canoes must also have been included…
The food plants they brought with them to Tonga were the same as were
used elsewhere in the Pacific—the coconut, talo [taro], breadfruit, yam
and banana (Campbell 1992: 18).
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New Zealand was the last island group to be colonised by
Polynesians. Many of the important plants found in the rest of
Polynesia, such as coconut, pandanus and breadfruit, did not exist in
the New Zealand flora, and could not be grown because the climate
was too cold. New Zealand Maori adapted by developing techniques
for growing and storing kumara (sweet potato), a staple of their diet. In
the absence of fibres from these trees, Maori also adapted Polynesian
weaving traditions to make use of the locally available flax plant,
comprising several genera and species, producing the distinctive
and deeply symbolic story-telling patterns of Maori material culture
(Riley 2005). Gathercole (1977) called this adaptation process ‘cultural
localisation’.
Traditional forest knowledge of the people of the Western Pacific
is not only about the resources and cultural values of forests but also
about their modification in the context of horticulture and agroforestry. Nevertheless, forests remain an important source of food,
raw materials and medicines. Gathercole (1977) describes Polynesians
as horticulturalists who continued to appreciate the nutritive and
economic value of many wild plants and animals, particularly when
yields from domesticates were unavailable or low. The languages of
Polynesia demonstrate the relative importance of crop plants and
forest foods. Kai (food) comprises two elements: ‘staple starches’, such
as the cultivated taro and yams, and the ‘relishes’. The latter includes
opportunistically harvested nuts and fruits from the forest; while
considered to be highly desirable, they do not constitute a meal (Kirch
1979). As with most Western Pacific countries, forest foods assume a
greater importance during times of hardship, such as crop failure or
natural disasters.
How does traditional knowledge of the forest expand to incorporate
new elements associated with horticulture? Spriggs (1993) argues that
for the depauperate forests of island Melanesia, transplanting of useful
nut trees and other species from more productive habitats may have
been occurring well in advance of the conventionally accepted date
of 10,000 BP for agriculture in Melanesia. Spriggs claims that the
overall effect was to mimic the New Guinea rainforests from which
the island Melanesian settlers came (Spriggs 1993). If such activities
were occurring, they could represent early adaptations of traditional
forest knowledge to a new environment.
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9
Human impacts
Human settlement of the scale and longevity described above could
not have happened without environmental consequences, in some
cases of severe proportions. All the forests of the Western Pacific
have been altered by human settlement and exploitation, to a greater
or lesser extent. The distribution of certain tree species important for
food or raw materials is a result of deliberate plantings (Paijmans 1976),
and there is sound palynological and geomorphological evidence that
swidden agriculture and agro-forestry in the New Guinea Highlands
has resulted in major and dramatic changes to the forested environment
over the last 10,000 years (White and O’Connell 1982; Paijmans 1976;
Golson 1977). The majority of the grasslands are anthropogenic, as a
result of regular burning, producing sub-climax vegetation. Recently,
new paradigms have emerged, advocating a greater role for climate
change in modifying forests in Micronesia, which has implications
for interpretation of changes to the New Guinea landscape (HunterAnderson 2009).
In New Zealand, a third of the original forest had been cleared for
gardens prior to the arrival of the British in the early nineteenth century
(Roche 1990). The slash and burn techniques brought by the Polynesians
from the tropics were unsuitable in the temperate climate, and the
cleared forests did not regenerate, resulting in major deforestation in
the North Island (Metcalf 2006). Burning as a technique for clearing
land would have been effective in forests not adapted to fire; it was
necessary in order to create space for gardens and also for large groups
of people to live and to build their fortifications and other structures
(Guild and Dudfield 2009).
Vegetation communities in most of the islands of the Pacific are now
dominated by secondary regrowth in abandoned gardens, and highly
altered forests manipulated over millennia to favour certain species.
Primary forests contain shade-tolerant, long-lived trees, but thousands
of years of agro-forestry have replaced many of these with secondary
forests of shade-intolerant, short-lived tree species (Mueller-Dombois
2008). Most modern forests are a mixture of native species, early
introductions and later introductions, and in some cases introduced
species have completely replaced native species, e.g. at lowland sites on
older high islands in Hawaii (Mueller-Dombois 2008).
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Traditionally, indigenous people were part of a functioning socioeconomic system in which the natural environment was managed
and its resources utilised through a cosmological lens. Application of
traditional law ensured that ecosystems did not become unbalanced
or that a particular resource was not overexploited. It is clear, however,
that early agricultural systems did lead to unbalanced and degraded
ecosystems. It has been argued that Pacific Islanders ‘prospered by
disturbing the natural order’ (Sauer 1952, cited in Clarke and Thaman
1993). Newly arrived swidden agriculturalists cleared forest patches
to plant the root crop plants that they had brought with them, and
established tree crops by selective planting and manipulation. Clarke
and Thaman (1993) argue that modification of the closed forests
rendered the islands more productive of food and more congenial to
human occupation. Similarly, Geertz has argued that mixed planted
crops eventually come to resemble the bush that they replace; a ‘natural
forest is transformed into a harvestable forest’ (Geertz 1963, cited in
Kirch 1979).
It is even possible that traditional systems of forest management
were initially unsustainable and led to societal collapse in pre-contact
times. The eventual transformation of natural landscapes brought
with it systems of agriculture and agro-forestry that were sustainable
(Siwatibau 2009). Cox and Elmqvist (1994) argue that although some
Pacific Islanders used unsustainable practices initially, they rapidly
developed cultural proscriptions against resource overuse and
depletion, to guard against resource degradation turning into human
and social poverty.
Cosmologies
The worldviews and cultural identities of Oceanic people are embedded
in complex and ancient connections with the land, sea and sky. No
distinction is made between religious and secular dimensions, and
the material world is suffused with spiritual forces which had to be
respected and manipulated for human survival and well-being (Reid
1995). Connections are reflected in cosmology, language and in ‘ways
of doing things’, forming part of a holistic integrated system. Customs
and language emerged from common Austronesian origins that
became widely dispersed through a long historical process of human
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11
migration. In the course of this history of geographic dispersal and
expansion, an immense diversity of linguistic and cultural forms
was produced (Reuter 2006), but common ancestry is still evident,
particularly in the knowledge systems for growing root crops and in
traditional agro-forestry.
Cosmologies of Oceania’s indigenous peoples comprise stories
relating to the origin and creation of the world and humans by gods
or spirit beings. They link the present to the past through the actions
of the ancestral beings and impose responsibilities on humans in their
relations with the natural world. In Tongan society, fonua invokes
a cosmology in which the environment is regarded as ‘an extension
of human society’ (Mahina 1992, cited in Francis 2006). As a result,
human agency is integral to a physical landscape that includes the
land, the ocean and the sky. The concept of fonua ‘people of/and
place’ described a local territorial entity that incorporated the land
and natural surrounds associated with a chiefly title holding, and the
people residing on that land. Fonua is also a descriptive term for the
soil that grips the roots of plants when pulled from the earth. The
old Tongan word for placenta was fonus, a reference to the practice of
burying the placenta after the birth of a child (Francis 2006). Similarly,
in New Zealand Maori cosmology, the word for land, whenua, is the
same as that for placenta (Walker 2004).
The cosmology of the Austronesian inhabitants of Oceanic
islands contains both rootedness and mobility (Bonnemaison 1985).
While rootedness imparts a sense of belonging to a specific place
for each separate culture, mobility reflects the connections between
them, resulting from sea voyaging histories and transference of
knowledge throughout Oceania. Austronesian-speaking societies
have constructed their sense of identity by origin narratives that tend
to treat ‘people’ and ‘land’ as mutually constitutive categories within
a single, place-oriented and movement-oriented schema of ancestral
identity and sacred geography (Reuter 2006). In the landscape of
Ambryn, an island in northern Vanuatu, the ground itself, the ‘tan’,
comprises the descendants of those who originated from it, absorbing
the power of the ancestors who dwell in and around it, protecting its
own and tormenting interlopers (Patterson 2006).
Cosmologies include improvements to the land for sustaining
humans. The yam planting cycle in Oceania is intricately tied to
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human health and wellbeing. Yams are one of the most important
crops in Oceania and New Guinea, with great utilitarian as well as
symbolic significance. Historical accounts of traditional Kanak life in
New Caledonia state that people perceived themselves by analogy with
objects of nature, such as the yam, whose cycle symbolised the cycle of
life (Dahl 1989).
Being part of the natural world is thus fundamental to indigenous
people’s understanding and management of landscapes, whether they
are natural forests, tree crops, managed forests or constructed gardens.
Many Oceanic origin narratives recognise and attempt to reconcile
conflicting value spheres of religious status and secular power within
the models of society that they create. According to these models, people
share a collective ritual responsibility towards the Earth, which requires
and promotes social cooperation. At the same time, they acknowledge
that, as individuals with a strategic interest in a political economy based
on agriculture, people also have a concern for dividing and controlling
land (Reuter 2006). The embeddedness of land control and division in
cosmology helps to explain an apparent disjunction between harmony
with the earth beliefs and the activities of agriculturalists in causing
deforestation and environmental degradation.
A powerful creation story in Maori lore concerns the kauri, Agathis
australis. This majestic tree was not only the god of the forest but also
the creator of the first human.
Tāne created the forests when he separated his parents, Ranginui (the sky
father) and Papatūānuku (the earth mother), and let light into the world.
As Tāne Mahuta he is god of the forest, presiding over its plants and
birds. As Tānenui-a-rangi he is creator of the first human. Respect for
Tāne’s forest was shown by performing certain tikanga (customs). Their
importance is reflected in the story of Rātā. Rātā went into the forest, cut
down a tree, and began to carve it into a canoe. When he returned the
next day to continue his task, the tree was miraculously standing in its
original position. He felled it again and set to work, but the same thing
happened the following day, and the next. Finally, Rātā hid behind a
bush and saw the hakuturi (forest guardians in the form of birds, insects
and other life) replanting the tree. When he confronted them, they told
him he had failed to perform the appropriate rites. He then did so, and
the hakuturi released the tree.
The great trees of Tāne, god of the forest, were called Ngā Tokotokoo-te-rangi (the posts that hold the heavens aloft) because they held
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13
Ranginui (the sky father) above Papatūānuku (the earth mother) (Te
Ara—The Encyclopedia of New Zealand 2009).
Other New Zealand trees are also important in mythology:
Tōtara had pride of place among the tall trees. The saying ‘kua hinga te
tōtara’ (a tōtara has fallen) described the death of an important person or
chief (Te Ara—The Encyclopedia of New Zealand 2009).
Taboos or tapu acted as a sustainability measure in traditional forest
use. These occur throughout the Pacific and were usually imposed by
village chiefs to prohibit use of a particular resource. The prohibitions
generally related to resources in decline, with strict punishments for
ignoring the bans (Government of Samoa 1998; Nalail 1996). Taboos
can be temporary, to allow resources to build up, or they can be
permanent. Siwatibau (1984) notes that in Fiji, superior specimens of
the hardwood tree, vesi (Intsia bijuga), are normally only used to build
the houses of important chiefs.
Connections between forests and gardens
Agricultural peoples of the Western Pacific have worldviews
that maintain strong connections between their living space and
the surrounding forests. Mosko (2006) describes the traditional
classificatory patterning of ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ spaces with reference
to the North Mekeo people of the central province of Papua New
Guinea. The Mekeo world is divided between the village and the bush
with constant movements and transformations between the two as part
of daily life. The village is conceptualised as the outside space, which
was initially ‘cleared out’ of the inside space of the bush. This means
that the outside village contains much that originated in the inside
bush and is a metaphor for transformations between the human body
and the outside world.
Within this broader cosmos, traditional forest knowledge of
Austronesians is concerned with the cultural relationships with the
biota of native forests and ‘transported landscapes’ of agro-forests,
irrigated swamps, dry field agriculture, and a suite of consciously
and accidentally introduced organisms. Merlin (2000) provides an
excellent analysis of ethno-botanical research in remote Oceania,
noting that observations of traditional plant use and agro-forestry have
been occurring since the voyages of James Cook in the late eighteenth
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century. Botanists and anthropologists such as Barrau and Yen have
greatly enhanced knowledge on the origins, taxonomy (folk and
scientific) and distributions of crop plants in the Pacific (see Yen 1993).
For Papua New Guinea, Powell (1976) provides an excellent
synthesis of previous ethno-botanical research. Based on this and his
direct observation, he gives comprehensive species lists of plant foods,
distinguishing six main categories of levels of plant domestication and
use by local indigenous people. Powell’s analysis indicates that staple
foods are primarily starchy underground roots and tubers, whereas
supplementary foods are a very wide range of fruits, nuts and greens.
No wild foods were cultivated as staples, although wild forms of root
crops such as taro and yam exist. Most forest foods were identified
as supplementary foods and many wild foods are transplanted and
cultivated as crops within forests or as productive trees around villages.
Further south, in New Zealand the large forest tree, totara
(Podocarpus totara), was used by Maori for making fire and
manufacturing canoes and was highly valued for carving. A new totara
tree had to be planted each time one was felled, to appease Tane, the
god of the forests, for removing one of his children. This practice also
ensured sustainable practices for use of valuable trees. The tall, straight
kahikatea (Dacryridium dacryoides) bears sweet fruits that were highly
prized by Maori. Fruits of the miro (Prumnopitys ferruginea) are
very attractive to the New Zealand pigeon, and Maori used to place
carefully snared water troughs in miro trees to catch the pigeons while
they drank (Metcalf 2006).
Letters by John Deans to his father in 1845 contained observations
of traditional Maori life in the Riccarton–Christchurch region of the
South Island, where a sophisticated socio-economic system produced
surplus goods for trade and supported powerful tribal chiefs:
Effective techniques for obtaining the different foods, whilst at the same
time conserving the resource, had been perfected, and a sophisticated
social system had been developed to do the required work…Each
whanau (extended family) had its allotted rights to take its requirements
within the rules laid down, and its allotted part to play in producing a
surplus for the tribal headquarters, and for the use of groups in other
parts of the tribal territory, who would supply something else in return.
Thus a Maori community living at Putaringamotu would specialize in
products from the local forest—preserved pigeons, carved totara and
canoes…(Molloy 1995: 3–4).
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Cultivated landscapes of the Western Pacific
The replacement of natural forest ecosystems with human agricultural
systems over the last few millennia means that today approximately
six million Pacific Islanders rely on traditional agriculture for their
subsistence needs (Manner 2005). Most traditional agricultural
systems depend on connections with a range of natural ecosystems,
and many terms have been used to describe land-use practices in the
Pacific, for example, agro-forestry, agro-ecosystems and arboriculture
(Kennedy and Clarke 2004; Thaman 1989), and classificatory systems
have been developed to describe the various methods of cultivation and
land use (Manner 2005). The term ‘cultivated landscapes’ is used here,
after Kennedy and Clarke (2004) who use archaeological, geographical
and anthropological sources to demonstrate the antiquity of forest
transference and manipulation within a broader socio-economic
system of landscape management. In these integrated systems of
land management, coconuts, breadfruit trees and other economically
valuable trees are components of traditional Pacific agro-forestry
systems, in which forest, orchard, field and garden are integrated both
spatially and temporally (Clarke and Thaman 1993; Kennedy and
Clarke 2004).
Traditional agro-forestry systems across the Pacific exhibit
common characteristics of high species diversity, incorporating
cultivated and protected native and introduced tree species (up to
300 on the larger Melanesian islands). These include tree crops such
as coconuts, breadfruit and bananas, as well as a wide range of fruit
and nut species, deliberately planted, encouraged and protected in the
regeneration of regrowth or spared when clearing new garden plots
(Thaman 1989). Within a given species of tree or root crop there are
many locally differentiable cultivars and varieties, with variable yields
and seasonalities, spreading distribution of food more evenly across
the annual cycle. Different cultivars exhibit differential adaptations to
ecological conditions such as salt spray, pest and disease resistance, soil
type and shade tolerance. Some cultivars were selected for a specific
use; different coconut cultivars, for instance, are used for drinking,
eating or production of coir for making ropes (Thaman 1989).
Siwatibau (1984) discusses traditional environmental practices in
Fiji to demonstrate that Fijians have developed methods of shifting
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cultivation that optimised resource utilisation without depleting the
resource base. The optimum location for a new garden was carefully
chosen and the garden was established by slashing the forest, often
leaving the large trees. Ground disturbance was minimised (and effort
reduced) by leaving tree stumps to rot. The slashed vegetation was
burnt and weeded, and if slopes were steep the rubble was placed along
contours to reduce soil erosion. New crops were then planted using
methods appropriate to the plant species.
Thaman et al. (undated) note that Pacific Island agricultural and
land-use systems were built on a foundation of protecting and planting
trees, developed and managed for human need and for ecological
services. Traditional land management in Tonga involves a complex
mix of trees, shrubs and short-term ground crops incorporated
into short-term shifting agriculture on small plots of land. Cleared
vegetation is allowed to dry and is then burnt, with large, important
food trees (cultivated or native) left unburnt. Some are pruned to allow
light in and to produce leaves, which fall to the ground and act as mulch.
Larger branches are used as trellises for the yams, and then as firewood
after yam harvest. Trees such as pandanus or hibiscus are planted along
garden edges to act as boundaries or windbreaks, and to provide food
and other products. Living fences could consist of important timber
trees such as Casuarina sp. The root crops are planted and harvested
sequentially, and the cycle is sometimes extended by planting kava or
paper mulberry, used for making the traditional tapa cloth. The garden
slowly returns to fallow over four to ten years, but the existing trees
continue to provide food, medicines and other products. Thaman et
al. (undated) aptly describe these systems as ‘long term investment of
time, knowledge and effort in a living, growing bank account’.
Figure 3 shows an example of this, from the Papua New Guinea
highlands, where crops are planted under the forest canopy, and
when they begin to grow, trees are felled on top of them. This practice
was viewed with trepidation by Australian patrol officers, but is in
fact uniquely suited to maintaining the resilience of the rainforest
by minimising soil disturbance and enabling the area to be quickly
reclaimed after the garden is abandoned. The undergrowth beneath
the forest canopy is cleared, and planting material such as taro tops
and banana suckers is planted into the humus on the forest floor. The
canopy protects the new garden from rain, and filters the sun in its first
FROM KAURI TO KUMARA
17
Figure 3:
Traditional agriculture in
the Papua New Guinea
Highlands.
(Top) A. Crops growing
through felled trees.
(Left) B. Forest giants being
felled in highland Papua
New Guinea.
18
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weeks. Each tree in the garden area then has a scarf cut into one side
to direct its fall, and after a few weeks when the crop has ‘taken root’ a
large tree is cut, creating a ‘domino effect’ resulting in all of the trees
falling ‘slowly’ together in a tangled mass. The fall is softened by the
branches breaking and dissipating energy. The crops can easily grow
through the tangle. Other advantages of this method of agriculture
include the protection of the soil from leaching and baking by the
initial mulch of leaves and twigs, the release of nutrients as the mulch
decomposes, and breaking up heavy raindrops by the tangle of fallen
trees, preventing erosion from runoff. The original condition of the
forest floor is maintained enabling a quick reversion to rainforest after
the garden is abandoned. Additionally, it is a low energy method of
clearing in a sparsely populated area, and the fallen tangle of trees
forms an excellent defence for houses built in the centre of the garden
area, as well as a ready supply of firewood and fencing materials.3
Traditional knowledge in a modern world
There is an emerging body of populist and scientific literature urging
modern society to learn from the traditional forest practices of
indigenous cultures, e.g. Knudtson and Suzuki (1992); Sveiby and
Skuthorpe (2006); Jansen and Tutua (2001). It has been suggested that
sustainable forest management in a modern world would benefit from
increased recognition and application of the knowledge and traditions
held by indigenous peoples (Colfer et al. 2005).
However, as indigenous cultures modernise and become part of
the market economy, traditional systems and knowledge are becoming
increasingly irrelevant and are being lost. In Papua New Guinea, local
villagers articulated the tensions between modern education and
traditional knowledge in the following way:
We cannot use the same practices used by our ancestors nowadays,
because educated people do not respect and listen to the village elders.
Educated people are proud of themselves, they think they have been to
school and are more knowledgeable than the village elders. Therefore,
if village elders make rules to conserve a certain area, people that have
some form of western education will not adhere to those rules (Ellis 1997,
cited in Filer 2000: 14).
Exposure of many Pacific countries, especially Melanesian countries,
FROM KAURI TO KUMARA
19
to the global market economy has often resulted in the dominant values
of forests being equated with large-scale timber extraction, contributing
to deforestation (Lindberg et al. 1997). Deforestation and forest clearing
for cash cropping in the Pacific Islands has gone hand in hand with
erosion of people’s knowledge of nature, together with decreasing respect
for their relationships with it (Siwatibau 2003). Large-scale logging
and other extractive activities are creating environmental imbalances,
which affect the lifestyle of traditional people and create a cultural
vacuum. The push for economic development has side effects that have
posed serious threats to the natural environment, and to traditional
life and culture, with youth resorting to violent crime because of losing
traditional roots (Basu 2000).
Siwatibau (2009) notes that traditional knowledge and appreciation
of forests and their potential for future benefits are being lost because
island communities have reduced their reliance on forest products in
response to the loss of forest species. The more the natural landscape
is altered, the more people become disconnected from it, with a
concomitant reduction of an appreciation of its social, environmental
and economic values (Filer 2000).
Thaman (1989) coined the term ‘agrodeforestation’, referring to
present generations of Pacific Islanders planting fewer trees around their
villages, traditionally used for a wide range of purposes. This reduction
in number and diversity is a major issue on small atolls where there is
little native forest to provide supplementary foods and raw materials
for building and fuel-wood. Preferences are also forming for imported
foods, and there is an increasing dependence on species grown as
monospecific cash crops, as well as for new cultivars of staple plants,
often at the expense of traditional varieties. Collectively, these factors
contribute to a loss of traditional knowledge which in turn renders
it less relevant. A study in the Solomon Islands showed that instead
of the 87 plants harvested from forests less than 50 years ago, there
are now fewer than 10 still being utilised. Thus, forests are no longer
perceived as a culturally valuable, multifunctioning phenomenon,
capable of sustaining humans, but as more of a commodity (Jansen
and Tutua 2001).
Increasingly, though, indigenous communities desirous of
conserving their forests and their culture are seeking commercial
alternatives to assist in retaining traditional knowledge (Wilke et al.
20
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2002). Commercialisation of non-timber forest products (NTFP) and
ecotourism are identified in the State of the Worlds Forests report
2009 as alternatives to large-scale logging and key areas of the Food
and Agriculture Organisation’s forestry programme.4 The success of
this programme relies on the continued existence of intact forests,
and there are links between development of these industries and the
conservation of forested areas, although development and conservation
goals do not always align (Arnold and Ruiz-Perez 2005).
Although there are links between conserving forest areas and
NTFP industries, in the absence of land-use planning, extensive cash
cropping of NTFP can also lead to deforestation. Commercialisation
of the kava/sakan plant (Piper methysticum) on the Micronesian island
of Pohnpei is a case in point. This plant has been used for centuries in
Oceania to produce a psychoactive drink prepared traditionally from
chewing and pounding the roots of the tree. Kava is a sacred plant to
many Oceanic peoples and its use was controlled through customary
law, being restricted to chiefs and religious people, and for medicinal
purposes. Today it is widely used as a recreational drink, causing social
and environmental problems in Pohnpei, particularly the destruction
of the montane forests. A partnership between a non-government
organisation and local community groups has enabled an integration
of cash crops, such as kava, back into the traditional agro-forests, rather
than farmers neglecting their subsistence activities to concentrate on
cash cropping (Merlin and Raynor 2005).
Thaman and others argue that integration of traditional agro-forestry
practices into appropriate cash cropping systems is essential for the wellbeing and sustainable development of Pacific societies (e.g. Thaman
1989; Kennedy and Clarke 2004). They argue that in order to maintain
species diversity there needs to be a balance between monocropping of
commercial export crops and subsistence crops, and between modern
agro-forestry and preservation of traditional polycultural agro-forestry.
Thaman is a strong advocate for a more traditional, less capital-intensive
and less monocultural approach to modern agricultural economies in
the Pacific through legislation and systems for protecting and promoting
important or endangered tree species as part of agricultural programmes.
This would involve going back to traditional holistic approaches rather
than government or overseas aid-driven compartmentalised approaches
(Thaman 1989, 2002).
FROM KAURI TO KUMARA
21
Replanting with traditional species and reforestation programmes
can be effectively developed through forestry and agricultural
extension programmes. Many local farmers are keen to plant in current
or old garden sites, especially if they are provided with seedlings free of
charge. These programmes are also an effective way to retain and pass
on knowledge about traditional agro-forestry. Local farmers want to
grow cash crops for both domestic and commercial use but adequate
planning and training are needed to ensure that forests are not cut out
as a consequence.
Conclusion
The history of indigenous people’s settlement and development in
the Oceanic islands of the Pacific has produced a deep knowledge
of forests in the context of both their ‘wildness’ and their capacity
to be transformed into cultivated landscapes. Most Pacific peoples
continue to practice subsistence agriculture using eons-old traditional
knowledge, combining forest use and manipulation with construction
and maintenance of gardens as part of integrated traditional agroforestry systems.
In recent decades development pressures have led to loss of forests
through cash cropping and large-scale commercial logging. This has
caused concern among communities, non-governmental organisations
and some practitioners, who have drawn direct links between loss of
forests and loss of traditional forest knowledge. There have been calls
for government policies to give greater recognition to traditional forest
and garden knowledge to improve the sustainability of current forest
management. While it may be unrealistic to believe that traditional
ways will, on their own, overcome environmental or social problems,
advocates of traditional systems are developing techniques for
incorporating traditional agro-forestry systems into contemporary
forest management.
22
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Notes
1 This term is used interchangeably with ‘traditional knowledge’, ‘traditional
ecological knowledge’ and ‘traditional forest knowledge’. Indigenous knowledge
is also called ‘local knowledge’ although they are not necessarily the same.
Other terms are ‘folk knowledge’ and ‘non-scientific knowledge’.
2 Austronesians are people with a shared ancestry and belong to a widespread
family of languages with a possible origin in Taiwan around 5,000 years ago
(Bellwood et al. 1995).
3 Information and photographs courtesy of David Eastburn, The Australian
National University.
4See http://www.fao.org/forestry/nwfp/en/
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